Blog

The ideas and conclusions in this blog are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oxford Capital Partners. They are for general interest only and should not be taken as investment advice or as an invitation to purchase or sell any investment.

Along with Christmas jumpers and tinsel, December also brings with it an inbox influx of industry predictions for the coming year. We have sifted through some of the best and come up with our favourite predictions for 2017.
TakeawAI
This year wil...

At Oxford Capital, we are a UK-focused early stage investor. We like to focus on the UK because we are a relatively small team of 8, but also because we believe in the UK's potential as an ecosystem for nurturing and building great tech businesses.
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Oxford’s entrepreneurs and innovators have never had it so good. For the first time, in over two decades, there is a wall of capital of over £1 billion available to fund great ideas and emerging businesses within the Oxford cluster.
According t...

Are we in a new tech bubble, or are things different this time?
Is the US tech sector signalling the peak of the market and the coming of the next crash? Has the $50bn valuation of Uber caused the first reverberations that will hit the US tech mar...

Each January, technology journalists and industry commentators are keen to share their predictions for the year ahead. What will be the big tech trends and developments in 2015? Here is our round-up of the best of the pundits’ guesses.
1. Smart ...

We’ve recently announced our newest investment, Wrisk, a great insurtech startup we backed this summer, leading a £3.0m super seed round. I’m super excited that we’ve had the opportunity to back the Wrisk founders Niall & Darius as they se...

We are very excited to announce our participation in Curve’s Series A round. Curve is building a money hub that uses an all-cards-in-one Curve MasterCard to enable users to spend from all their accounts, and a mobile app to manage their money in on...

We are delighted to announce that our portfolio company Push Doctor has raised a £20m Series B funding round, led by new investor Accelerated Digital Ventures, Draper Esprit, Oxford Capital and Seventure. We first invested in Push Doctor in late 201...

Tom Bradley joined Oxford Capital in 2015 and is responsible for investing the funds raised by the firm’s Growth EIS. What does he look for in an entrepreneur and their business, before taking the decision to back them?
This blog is aimed at qua...

We produce huge amounts of data — not just in aggregate on networks synonymous with big data like Google or Facebook — but as siloed users as well. Just have a look at your inbox: Hundreds of messages a day, sent and received, deliverable...

At the end of May, I spent two days at the Connected Car Forum in Monaco. Arranged by Cassandra Harris and her team at VentureSpring, the conference attracted some of the industry’s most knowledgeable experts from companies including McLaren Applie...

At Oxford Capital, we talk about making two types of investment: High Potential and Early Growth.
In each of these areas there are common characteristics that we seek – obvious examples would be the strength of the team, the quality of the produ...

In January 2016 Oxford Capital announced its investment in Import.io. This company has created a software platform (SaaS, or Software as a Service) that can collate vast quantities of unstructured data from across the internet, and turn it into datas...

On the strength of this year's Slush conference, one of Europe's biggest tech investment events, it's clearly an exciting time for European entrepreneurs to be raising money.
Welcome the dark. Embrace the cold. So implored the organisers of Slush....

Web Summit is one of Europe's biggest gatherings of startup internet businesses and investors interested in backing them. Will Orde from Oxford Capital spent three days at the summit and couldn't help being struck by the vibrancy of the early stage s...

UK excess power margin could hit 0% in the winter of 2016-17, making winter blackouts and other power problems more likely. This has created an opportunity to invest in ‘Reserve Power’ – high-specification, small-scale generating plant that rec...

What do we look for in an eCommerce company? A great team, differentiated technology and some fledgling revenues are all important factors. But there are also a number of Key Performance Indicators that we find particularly revealing for companies in...

The use of energy storage has the ability to improve both power quality and power costs. We argue that locating storage close to end users, in the form of Distributed Energy storage, offers the greatest benefit to both investors and consumers.
The i...

The business model of large UK utilities is currently under siege from a combination of lower revenues and higher costs – and will need to embrace Distributed Energy to survive. Investors in Distributed Energy will benefit.
On the revenue side, ...

The Venture Capital industry's interest in digital media has cooled off recently. But there are still good reasons to be interested in the sector.
Digital media, encompassing advertising and marketing technologies ('adtech' and 'martech'), has lon...

Distributed energy offers the potential for high investor returns whilst addressing the energy 'trilemma' of security, sustainability, and affordability.
Historically, the cost of generating power in the UK has been higher than the cost of transport...

The proliferation of mobile phone usage and the move to 'freemium' gaming business models has created opportunities for tech investors.
As many market commentators have observed, we are in the latest wave of a computing revolution that really star...

A new report shows that Europe has produced 40 $1bn companies since 2000, nearly half of which were British businesses.
The chances are that you have actually seen several unicorns. In fact, you probably encounter them on a daily basis. When Ailee...

The tumbling cost of hardware development and manufacture is helping start-ups enter the wearable technology market in droves, and rapid growth is expected. But there are still other technological limitations for the wearables sector to overcome.
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The general perception of the European VC landscape is often held to be that of a distant poor relation to the freneticism, ambition and volume of the US West Coast.
Fig 1. The Finnish PM takes the stage at Slush 2014 for the first day opening a...

The noise surrounding ‘wearable technology’ has built to a crescendo with the announcement of the Apple Watch, due to hit the shelves in early 2015. But will this be the moment that wearable technology finally hits the mainstream, or will most co...

MirriAd has announced a partnership with VEVO, an online music video channel that accounts for half of YouTube’s traffic. The deal represents the first step in a potential quantum leap for online digital advertising.
Last year Google invested a ...

Why Big Data is increasing demand for an ageing technology.
We’ve blogged before about Big Data and the Cloud, and it is well known that both markets are growing at an astonishing rate.
The darlings of the sectors tend to be the software deve...

As ever at this time of year, many journalists, industry commentators and other pundits have been busily writing their predictions for the year ahead. Here are six predictions that caught our eye.
Impact investing grows up.
Impact investing (inve...

This year’s Slush conference, held in Helsinki, brought some of Europe’s most promising start-ups together with technology giants including Spotify, Alibaba and Rovio.
Oxford Capital attended the event, which highlighted the opportunities and ...

Following our investment in Abiquo, a Cloud management software developer, this month we examine the continued growth and investment potential of the Cloud industry.
The Cloud Computing market includes many innovative, fast-growing businesses, eac...

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